Conventional design applications are a subclass of application software used for graphic design, multimedia development, specialized image development, image editing, or simply to access graphic files. Conventional design applications utilize either raster or vector graphic reading and editing methods to create, edit, and view digital media (e.g. animations, graphics, images, designs, media objects, etc.). Many conventional design applications, such as graphics programs, focus exclusively on either vector or raster graphics, but there are a few that combine them.
Most conventional design applications have the ability to import and export one or more graphics file formats. Several graphics programs support animation, or digital video. Vector graphics animation can be described as a series of mathematical transformations that are applied in sequence to one or more shapes in a scene. Raster graphics animation works in a similar fashion to film-based animation, where a series of still images produces the illusion of continuous movement.
Some conventional design applications utilize bitmap-based (i.e. raster-based) tools for editing raster-based graphical objects. Other conventional design applications utilize vector-based tools for editing vector-based graphical objects. There are other conventional design applications that can be used for editing both raster-based objects and vector-based objects, and thus utilize both bitmap and vector tools. However, both tools work independently of each other. If the graphical object being edited is raster-based (thereby defined according to a bitmap), the raster-based graphical object can only be edited with bitmap tools. If the graphical object being edited is a vector-based, the vector-based graphical object can only be edited with vector tools. However, often, conventional design applications allow for a raster-based object to be converted to a vector-based object, and—likewise—a vector-based graphical object can also be converted to a raster-based object.